But names were only prisons if you answered to them.
And Hira had learned to listen without belonging.
The mirror shrieked—not with sound, but with context collapse. The rift had grown sentient, aware now of the soul it had once been carved to contain. It liked her. It wanted her. Not as sacrifice or salvation.
As template.
The echo-Hira cocked her head again—more sharply this time, like a marionette snapped back into old rhythms. Her eyes shimmered with recursion. Her teeth were too many, too perfect, a fractal grin unraveling into infinity. "The Pattern is gone," she said softly. "But you can still belong. You can still be used."
The choice had never been freedom versus control.
It had always been use versus uselessness.
And the room agreed.
The walls pulsed with a breath Hira hadn't given them. The floor slithered with meaning, not movement. She was inside a story not yet spoken, and it hungered to begin.
